


Love and a cough

by meinposhbastard



Series: 2019 tropes fic challenge [8]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Aziraphale Has No Genitalia (Good Omens), Aziraphale Takes Care of Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley Has No Genitalia (Good Omens), Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Drama & Romance, Happy Ending, Light Angst, M/M, Male-Presenting Crowley (Good Omens), Miscommunication, No BS Anathema, Not Beta Read - We Fall Like Crowley, Post-Canon, Protective Anathema, Slow Romance, Tension, Touch-Starved, Wing Kink, Wings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-26
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:14:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21956485
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meinposhbastard/pseuds/meinposhbastard
Summary: It's cold. It's December. And Crowley's in a foul mood.At least there is one person in that city that knows what Crowley needs even if Crowley doesn't.And sometimes, some things need to get bad to get better. Even three years after the End-That-Was-Not. Even when it looks good and promising. Such is the nature of matters concerning one demon and one angel.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: 2019 tropes fic challenge [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1406413
Comments: 10
Kudos: 77





	Love and a cough

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ximeria](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ximeria/gifts).



> Glaedelig Jul, Xim!  
> 'Tis my late Jul gift to you! And with this, I think we're both done with gifts to each other for this year XD Couldn't let you be the only one who put much appreciated energy into writing fic, could I? Hope you enjoy it!
> 
> I'm pretty sure there will be mistakes along the way because I only went through the whole fic once after finishing it (and multiple times in the breaks between writing the scenes), for which I apologise in advance.
> 
> The title of the fic is taken from the poem "Small Wire" by Anne Sexton which you will find at the beginning of the fic. Thought it was fitting for what this fic is about. Also, the core of it started from this post (I managed to track it down): [link](https://ineffable-bastard-crowley.tumblr.com/post/188021644975). This is what I promised Xim months ago and it turned out to be Winter and not Autumn.
> 
> It sort of went out of control. *squints at wc*

* * *

My faith  
is a great weight  
hung on a small wire,  
as doth the spider  
hang her baby on a thin web,  
as doth the vine,  
twiggy and wooden,  
hold up grapes  
like eyeballs,  
as many angels  
dance on the head of a pin.  
  
God does not need  
too much wire to keep Him there,  
just a thin vein,  
with blood pushing back and forth in it,  
and some love.  
As it has been said:  
Love and a cough  
cannot be concealed.  
Even a small cough.  
Even a small love.  
So if you have only a thin wire,  
God does not mind.  
He will enter your hands  
as easily as ten cents used to  
bring forth a Coke. 

_Small Wire_ by Anne Sexton

* * *

“You’re growing your hair again.”

That had been said four months ago. Crowley had hummed, which hadn’t confirmed nor denied it.

In four months, his spiteful red hair was covering his nape and curling at the ends. That detail he did not like; the curling. But he liked it when it kept his ears warm. A bit on the loose side, it knew better than to stray forward and cover his shades when he was driving.

At Aziraphale’s place, he usually tied it into a low little ponytail, knowing that the angel would, at some point, take notice and gravitate closer to play with it. He liked that little detail because Aziraphale liked the feel of it, how it tickled his fingers softly as they made the ponytail twirl around his index because it was thin and silky to the touch. It knew better than to be anything less.

But Crowley despised the cold of December, the lights thrown over houses and connecting lamp posts, the plastic bells tied with red tinsel or ribbons around pine branches, the Christmas tree shapes glued to windows and framed by little fairy lights. He despised them because they cluttered the streets of Mayfair and Soho and, really, the whole of London.

And then the angel put on fairy lights in the shapes of stars on some of his windows.

“Crowley, my dear, please stop staring at my fairy lights as if you expect them to melt into oblivion.”

“Why did you put them up?”

“Because Christmas is around the corner. You know that.”

“You didn’t do this to your windows last year. Or the year before.”

“I was rather busy last year. Didn’t have time. Besides, you went and got a cold out of all things. And refused to make it go away, so I had to nurse you back to health. For a month.”

The corner of his mouth twitched. Best idea he had that month. Too bad he couldn’t pull the same thing twice in a row. Or every December from now till forever. The angel indulged him back then because they had been still too fresh from the Apocalypse, even if a year had passed. Still too raw from the trials. And still too naked before each other’s eyes after the body swap.

A shiver wrecked his entire body and he straightened, fingers into his jeans pocket.

“They don’t deserve to celebrate his birthday.”

“Whyever not?”

“They _killed him,_ angel!” He whirled around on his feet, but did not march to the angel’s desk to shake him awake from that stupid charade. “He was so much more than those incredibly small minds could comprehend. He was beyond them, way above those dimwitted!”

In the meantime, Aziraphale had taken one of his button down wool jumpers and was bundling Crowley up. Crowley wanted to scream into his face, but that soft, all too empathetic and _pained_ smile told him that the angel was the last being he should take his anger on. But at the same time, he was the only one who could understand.

He collapsed, body, heart, and bitterness into his angel’s warm embrace.

“There, there, my love,” Aziraphale murmured into his temple, and Crowley shivered anew, but not because he was cold.

“They slapped Son of God on his back and called it a day. But when he began saying things that amassed a following they called him a heretic. Why do they always do this? These so-called faithful? Why do they raise a man to the status of god only for them to take him down and shred him to pieces when they don’t like what he’s saying anymore? Why? They’re so cruel!”

He exhaled a shuddering breath. He could not cry. Not now, not ever. He was simply incapable of that. So he was left to feel that unbeating heart break and hurt. Aziraphale’s arms tightened around him, as if feeling that Crowley was coming apart at the seams. He didn’t know why he felt so fiercely during December. It was a trying month for him, and that cold from last year— was not all a lie.

Aziraphale would not have put up with him if it were.

“He was a man ahead of his time,” he finished weakly.

By now, Aziraphale had covered every millimetre of skin on the left side of his face with soft kisses.

He was so warm and comfortable. He was the perfect amount of solid and fluff, of iron will and softness, of pain and joy. And he belonged to Crowley, because Crowley had always belonged to Aziraphale. They always had.

They were two birds of a feather.

The corner of his mouth twitched again.

More or less literally.

He slept on his sofa for a couple of hours, bundled up in Aziraphale’s jumper and two fleece blankets, before he jolted awake and left the bookshop in a frenzy.

***

Two days later, in the wee hours of the morning, Crowley was shivering uncontrollably inside the bookshop. There was a thin coat of snow outside and apart from the lamp posts and some luminous logos, Aziraphale’s place was the only one that gave off a warm, inviting glow.

“It’s colder than the devil’s tits outside!” And then, _“bleah!_ I can’t believe I just said that!”

“Good morning, Crowley,” Aziraphale said, pushing a mug of hot tea into Crowley’s ice-cold fingers.

A sigh ushered through his lips as he looked down at the dark liquid. Then another jumper, different than the one from two days ago, was draped over his shoulders and he sagged, closing his eyes. Aziraphale’s warm hands stayed on his shoulders.

“Let’s get you inside, closer to warmth.”

And inside was further into the bookshop, behind the bookshelves. At a safe distance from anything flammable, a lit hearth sat moulded into the wall.

“When did you get that? I don’t remember it.”

“Oh, some time ago. Can’t remember. Come, sit down. I’ll get you some slippers.”

“I’m fine in my shoes, angel.”

“Not when you’re cold from head to toe. Those look fashionable, but have no real practical purpose like keeping your feet well insulated.”

“They’re good for walking,” Crowley muttered into his tea.

He pulled the jumper closer to his neck and took a deep whiff. Aziraphale’s scent still clung to it— and that ghastly new cologne his _barber_ suggested. Somehow, he needed to change the angel’s mind on that. It was prickling his nose.

“Here you go,” he said and Crowley was about to toe off his shoes or will them away from his feet, but the angel knelt on one knee in front of him and began untying his right shoe.

“Angel,” he said, strangled and barely holding himself still lest he spilled the tea. “What are you doing?”

“Helping you out of your shoes, my dear.” He didn’t look up at him, but had that little beatific smile on his lips.

Small, cute to an untrained eye, but Crowley had spent six bloody millennia staring at his angel. He saw the infinitesimal details in that smile. The bastardness in the wee little cracks. The angel was on to something.

He took his sweet time unlacing each shoe and carefully, slowly, painstakingly gently took them off. Crowley was barely keeping his hand from crushing the cup of tea let alone tear his eyes away from watching the angel work on slipping the slippers on his feet.

A warm hand enveloped his ankle and the beatific smile became a pleasant, normal, Aziraphale-was-in-a-good-mood smile.

“There you go, dear boy.”

“Ngk!” He watched as Aziraphale stood up. “What did you do that for?”

“I’ll bring more blankets.”

“Angel, I know you’re on to something. What is it? Spill it!”

“You’ll end up taking a nap as you always do. More blankets are needed.”

Definitely something was afoot and he was going to get to the bottom of this. The angel was holding something from Crowley and he had a feeling that it would not go down well for him. Because when Aziraphale was treating him with care and— kiddy gloves, it meant that he was preparing Crowley for something else, bigger. Gently letting Crowley settle into a safe zone? Definitely a red flag for him.

He returned with two more blankets which he enveloped Crowley in even if Crowley protested once again. By this point it was jaw memory— or tongue memory. In any case, muscles were at work who remembered the sort of words Crowley would shape.

“And I made hot toddy for us to enjoy.”

The tea disappeared from his hand and a mug smelling of sugar and spirits and something else, spicy, replaced it and the angel sat right next to Crowley, as if they didn’t have enough space for a third person on the sofa.

“So we’re fire-watching.”

“We could also talk, if you wish to.”

Crowley stared at him. He had half a mind to take off his shades— but on second thought, perhaps that was a bit too much like handing all your shields to your enemy.

“Right. Of course. Talk. Yes. What are you doing?”

“I’m doing wonderfully, my dear. Thank you for asking. How about you? Are you comfortable?”

“Under four blankets, wool slippers and your jumper? Can’t say I’ve been more— no, you’re not distracting me, angel! What are you on to?”

“Whatever are you talking about? I am enjoying hot toddy with my friend who is having the holiday blues.”

Crowley opened his mouth, but he found no words there. He sipped from his toddy and found it delicious. The right amount of alcohol and sugar. Those spices only added to the taste.

Soon, he found himself completely relaxed into the blankets and slowly slid down until his head was comfortably placed on the back of the sofa.

“Let me get that for you.”

The mug — which was tilting precariously from his lax hand — was taken away, so he could finally slip his hand back into the warmth.

“Here, let me help make you more comfortable, my dear.”

He was too warm and comfortable to protest the handling, so he found his head cushioned on a thigh and the rest of his body stretched on three-quarters of the sofa.

He woke up to humming. It took him a while to realize that was what he was hearing.

“Angel, why are you humming?”

“You seemed to have trouble sleeping.”

He frowned. “I was dreaming.” Pause. “A nightmare, actually.” He grimaced as the dream came to him in flashes. “I was dreaming that I was chased down Hell’s corridors by Beelzebub and Gabriel. Beelzebub was wearing a one piece swimming suit in horizontal stripes of black and white and had a big rubber duck around their middle while Gabriel had dive fins and was dressed only in a bright red slip.”

Aziraphale shifted. “Really?” There was an odd quality to his voice, so when Crowley looked up, the angel’s smile was straining.

“They were trying to get me to take a bath.”

“And you didn’t want to.” The bastard was definitely trying not to laugh.

Crowley huffed. “Nobody tells me when to take a bath. Least of all an asshole archangel and a fearsome Prince of Hell.”

“What about a simple angel who helped you stop the Apocalypse?”

Crowley peered up. Aziraphale gave nothing away on his face. His hand kept carding through his hair and Crowley had to keep himself from shivering every time the hint of nails dragged across his scalp.

“Are you saying I smell?”

“No, you don’t. You never, actually.”

“Snakes don’t smell. Demons— well, of sulphur usually, but I try not to make too many trips to Hell. None nowadays.”

“I’m just saying,” Aziraphale dipped his hand beneath the blankets and found Crowley’s left. Every hair on his body stood on end when he felt the angel’s fingers dipping between his, slow and methodical. “I could fix you a bath. Your hands are still cold, my dear.”

From where Crowley’s head was resting, the angel looked so soft and inviting— and leaning down towards him.

Crowley did a half-roll away from under the safety of the blankets and the warmth of the angel, and landed on all fours on the fluffy rug — when did that one get there? — before he scrambled to his feet and booked it out of there.

***

The thing about his and Aziraphale’s relationship was that it slowly shifted from going too fast for the angel to becoming too straightforward for the demon. The angel stopped being so prim and polite and started touching Crowley whenever possible and smiling at him a touch too warmly and a touch too lovingly. It made Crowley’s skin break into goosebumps because he both craved his angel’s touch and was terrified by it. That change in his angel— he had no idea how to cope with it.

He wanted that. Of course he did. He didn’t moon over one particular Principality for ages just for fun. But unlearning how to release one’s foot from the breaks was something that Crowley struggled with in particular.

Every time the angel came too close to him or showed too much love, Crowley felt like drowning, like there was not enough oxygen in the room for him to function properly. And he didn’t need air more than he did food.

So it took him close to a week to shadow his angel’s doorstep again.

Don’t get him wrong, Crowley loved Aziraphale. He even admitted that to both himself and then the angel. But accepting the love one felt for someone and being in a relationship with them were two totally different things, he learned. He couldn’t seem to get used to be into his angel’s personal space or the angel to be in his. It made him literally bolt out of there as fast as possible.

And unless his angel tied him down or kept his iron arms around Crowley even when he resisted, there was no way Crowley would be able to by-pass that instinct.

But his angel never forced him to stay. He always let Crowley run away and he always welcomed him back with the same warm smile that got the block of ice around his heart to melt in an instant.

He wished his angel would impose himself more on Crowley, would insist he stayed.

“Welcome back, my dear.”

The jumper was more like a knitted long coat that covered him all the way down to his knees. It was black.

“Don’t remember this one,” he said, pulling it closer to his chest and taking a whiff of— there was only Aziraphale’s smell. He peered at his angel. “Didn’t you have a new cologne?”

His amiable smile turned into the kind of smile that made Crowley feel Hellfire licking at the soles of his feet. “I got fed up with the scent, so I threw it away. Do you think I should try a new one?”

“No,” he jumped to protest, but then retreated back into the black cardigan. “No need. I— like it like this.”

Aziraphale’s hands warmed his shoulders and Crowley kept expecting his angel to pull him into his arms, but they stayed like that, frozen figurines in an orange glowing bauble.

Crowley took off his glasses, folded them and then whisked them back in his Bentley where he kept his stash. Aziraphale had a curious expression on his face and Crowley decided that today he would not run away. Today was the day he pulled his foot off the brake.

And he started by leaning in and pressing his lips against his angel’s, then pushing his arms around his middle, then staying still as Aziraphale’s hands went into his hair and pulled off his hair tie.

The moment Crowley leaned back, he could basically feel his angel’s effervescent love bubbling to the surface and threatening to drown Crowley in it.

It was time for the next nail in his own coffin— of love.

“I think— I think I need a bath now.” He tried not to look at Aziraphale, but it was hard since he was curious to see his expression. “I don’t think blankets will help this time.”

“Of course, my love.”

His whole body seized up at that endearment because he let himself be naked before his angel once again, and he had to force himself past that clench to be able to follow a worried angel up the stairs and into his reconditioned flat.

There was a lit hearth there, too, which put the room at a higher temperature than the staircase. A double-bed was pushed near the window, piled high with quilts, downy blankets, knitted covers, big and small pillows and a few jumpers that looked as if Aziraphale threw them there carelessly. Perhaps in search for the one currently over Crowley’s shoulders.

Aziraphale guided Crowley into the next room which was where a clawfoot bathtub, sat in the middle of black and white tiles. It was so white, Crowley almost willed back his shades.

“Allow me,” Aziraphale said, pressing his palm over the lapel of Crowley’s jacket.

He nodded and then watched as his angel divested him of his clothes, slow and methodical until he stood naked on the checkered tiles. Helped by Aziraphale’s sure and firm hand, he climbed into the tub and sank into the liquid warmth. The water was just a tad too hot for a human to lay comfortably in it, but for Crowley’s inner snake that was what heaven felt like.

“Tell me about the nebulae you created,” Aziraphale said softly, his eyes tracing Crowley’s shins alongside his hands.

“The stars?”

“Everything. You never talked about them. I never asked. Now I want to know.”

He kept Aziraphale’s gaze, reading his honest intentions clear.

“Not much to say about that time.”

“Liar.”

“Angel.”

“I can call you a liar when you try to evade answering,”

“I can choose not to answer.”

“Yes. Yes, you can.”

Crowley watched as Aziraphale returned to lavishing his leg in attention. He watched his angel for a long time. The water never cooled down. His skin never went pruny. It was mesmerizing, the sight of his angel focused on Crowley’s body, his touch, gentle, but firm – there.

“I felt the most connected,” he said, head cushioned on the rim of the tub.

The ceiling melted into a veil of black dust and fairy lights. Crowley stopped breathing as he took that in, the memory of it. Out of the corner of his eyes a nebula exploded into being. His first.

He let his head loll to the side, lips quirking up.

“My first nebula was a roar of colour and light that had never existed until then. It wasn’t bright like God or cream-coloured like some angels kept their wings. It was—dark blue and vermillion and gold and that colour that’s associated with human girls.”

“Pink.”

“Yes. Pink. I knew how that looked like back then. I knew how most colours looked and felt and sounded. I sometimes get flashes of them when I hear Mozart or Einaudi. Some colours sounded so low and upbeat and left a warmth on my tongue that was like cashmere whispering down a lacquered table. Others, like the deep ocean blue and ash-black, brought about such a deep sadness in me.”

He opened his eyes a slit and looked down at the angel whose hands were elbow deep in the tub, on palm covering his bent knee, the other supporting his weight in-between Crowley’s ankles.

“You know we weren’t supposed to feel sadness,” Crowley continued. “It hadn’t been invented back then. We were all cut from the same cloth, all feeling the same harmony with the universe She created. We didn’t know we could feel anything else but love and balance. I felt.” He closed his eyes and sighed, lifting his chin and diving back into the memory. “Colours. So many of them. Trillions without a name, without a correspondent on this planet. It had been incommensurable.”

Aziraphale’s hands moved up his thigh and then passed over his stomach. Crowley’s breath hitched, but didn’t open his eyes.

“My first nebula was an accident.” He went for a half-smile. “I was supposed to create little circles made of dust and meteorites and then let them do their thing. But I pulled on a circle too much and my grace caught in the swirl. I wasn’t supposed to infuse my grace into anything I created. I could only use God’s Love, a well of which we all had aplenty, as momentum for inanimate objects to begin their journey and then let them create something of their own through collision.”

His angel’s hands were caressing his chest and his breath stuttered again, soft sighs passing through his lips as those hands pressed against his shoulders and then glided up the column of his neck.

He didn’t need to open his eyes to see his angel staring down at him. He could imagine the expression he’d have: perhaps a smile, the soft one, the one that melted Crowley’s unbeating heart on the spot; or perhaps he had one of those mysterious expressions, the one that bordered on being pensive, but a sudden shift would show a faint furrow of eyebrows, perhaps a purse of lips or, on the contrary, those lips were left ajar for a breath that he didn’t need.

Crowley let himself be held within those hands and let himself fall deeper and deeper.

In love? In his memory? In his body? In Aziraphale’s affection?

Yes.

He felt he should be scrambling up and out of the tub, away from the oncoming wave of Aziraphale’s love, but he also felt his body turned into molasses, his mind a placid well of liquid-solid keeping him down, keeping him relaxed, like kinetic sand.

“When the first nebula I accidentally created spiraled into a palette of colours,” he whispered, “I felt the most connected to everything that was and that would be coming.”

Aziraphale was right above him when next he opened his eyes. He didn’t look pensive or happy or curious or fond. His angel looked as if he was breaking apart at the seams. In the best ways possible.

“Please don’t drown me, angel.”

But he did. He did, he did, he did.

With his lips. And what came after. The wave crashed over Crowley and he gasped into his angel’s mouth. His hands cracked the sides of the tub as Aziraphale’s lips pressed against his, again and again, gently, feather-like soft, and nebulae unfurled like the tails of a thousand peacocks behind Crowley’s eyelids.

The taste of red and blue and every possible colour in-between made his tongue feel too big for his mouth, too porous, too gritty and dry, yet his angel touched it with his own.

He gasped, again and again.

_Please stop. No more. Too much. Too little. More. Enough. Angel. Let me breathe. Take my heart away from me. Drown me. Embrace me. Get me out of my mind. Protect me. Don’t allow me in. Gather me close to your heart. Never let me go._

_Never let me go. Please. Please. Please. Never._

Slowly, Aziraphale pulled back, his face creased in something that Crowley never wanted to put a name to because it was unnamable. It was _his. Only his._ The soft dips around his eyes, the relaxed, slightly open mouth, the light in his eyes.

“Crowley.” The word broke from his mouth like a piece of iceberg. The waves it created reverberate against his ribcage full and heavy like timbales on a quiet, island night.

He wanted to weep, but he had no tears to shed. He never did.

But Aziraphale had and he wept with Crowley and for him, and his lips pressed against Crowley’s, wet and salty and Crowley drank him in. He was full, overflowing, and he kept drinking and drinking and tasting Aziraphale’s love which came in small increments of soft cashmere and teal with a touch of lemon and ginger tea.

Perfect for any cold Crowley might have.

“Angel,” he said, a word carried out on a sigh.

If he could drink his angel whole—he wouldn’t. The absence of his shape in Crowley’s field of vision, of his tartan sleeve between his fingers, and of his lips against his own would be too harrowing to live with.

“My love,” Aziraphale said, his palm cupping Crowley’s cheek. “I think it’s time for you to come out.”

He let the angel help him up and then miracled the fluffiest and softest big towel into existence.

“I can do—”

“Yes, but let me.”

The towel, sunflower yellow, caressed his skin like a cloud on a summer day. He followed his angel as he circled him, watched him closely as he took care to dry every portion of skin with the utmost care. Crowley felt ravenous. Again. Watching his angel had always been enough for him. Whether Aziraphale ate, did his magic tricks, danced the gavotte, fretted, or was in the middle of being discorporated because he felt peckish, Crowley had always had enough of his angel share.

But now, after everything they’ve been through, after everything Aziraphale kept doing for and to Crowley, after putting up with so many of Crowley’s foolish, silly moods, Crowley was starving for his angel.

So much so that he caught Aziraphale by his generous hip and with a step towards him, he had him pressed into the queen bed, surrounded by quilts and pillows.

Aziraphale didn’t look surprised, but his hands did grip Crowley’s shoulders tightly. Crowley gazed hungrily down at him, forearms bracketing his head as his naked body pressed his angel into the mattress. Then, one hand went underneath his vest, still a layer away from skin. He bent down as if to kiss him, but didn’t.

“Please, angel, nothing between us.”

“Of course, my dear, anything you want.”

In the blink of an eye, Crowley’s lukewarm skin was pressed into feverish-hot skin. Neither had made an effort for their anatomy to be anything but smooth planes.

Aziraphale pushed himself into a seated position and Crowley’s knees were pressed against his angel’s thick thighs, their faces still so close to each other. Then Crowley unfurled his wings and Aziraphale drew a sharp breath in as his eyes took them in.

He tried to touch one of his wings, but Crowley twined their fingers and pulled his hand to his lips.

“I want to show you something,” he murmured against his knuckles, naked eyes keeping his angel’s wondrous gaze.

Slowly, he brought his wings forward, encasing them both in semi-darkness. Then, one by one, little drops of light came to life attached in clumps to each feather. He liked them to have a glass-like quality, so that there was this soft clink whenever he shifted.

Aziraphale gasped. “Crowley.”

Crowley was hungry for every expression that crossed his face as Aziraphale took in the many lights strewn across his wings and casting them in a faint white-yellow glow.

“I begged God to let me keep a form of them when I fell,” he said quietly, and had to swallow.

Aziraphale’s gaze turned back to him and his palms framed his neck and jaw. He looked like he wanted to say something but he didn’t know how until his lips pressed against Crowley’s and he knew those words. They tasted like salt and longing and a pain that ripped flesh and grace apart.

His arms gathered around Crowley’s neck and pulled him flush against his angel as they tasted each other’s love through wet lips and tremulous sighs. His wings tightened around them and the lights glowed more brightly than before.

They kissed for so long that when they separated and Crowley pressed his lips together, he only felt his angel between them.

He cupped Aziraphale’s hips, caressing his sides. Every sigh he dragged from his angel felt like a balm to his entire being; as if Aziraphale continuously bathed Crowley in milky-soft veils of stardust that were a part of his angel.

Then angel pressed his palms into his wings, right underneath where the bone bent and Crowley’s being was wrecked by a shiver so intense he gasped.

It was Aziraphale’s turn to look at Crowley the same way Crowley felt in the bathroom, right before he changed their location: debating with himself if he should devour his demon (because Crowley was unrepentantly his) or let him live to see another day. Aziraphale did it again, pushed his fingers into Crowley’s feathers, but this time Crowley was prepared.

The shiver didn’t almost dislodge him from where his bum was cushioned by Aziraphale’s plump thighs, but it did make him tremble atop his angel.

Lips found his and then those fingers dipped and _dragged_ , pressing the feathers between them, and Crowley gasped, arching his back and seeing nebulae unfold behind his eyelids, bathed in the kind of light he hadn’t seen in eons. A knot loosened inside him.

He was breathing hard, his head resting on Aziraphale’s shoulder. Entirely boneless and feeling as if his angel just melted him from the inside out, he struggled to open his eyes.

“Angel, what did you do to me?”

“It’s been a long way coming, my dear.”

“What has?”

He felt his angel’s gaze on his cheek and slowly pushed himself back, but Aziraphale’s arm around his back didn’t let him go too far.

“You haven’t let anyone touch you like this?”

Crowley blinked. “No. Too intimate.”

His angel’s face melted into a soft smile. “I provided the release you needed. Usually, it takes more time than that, but—”

Understanding trickled into his mind. “You just gave me a wing—job.” He pushed himself against his angel until he lay back down on the pillows, Crowley’s wings folding back a bit, like a streak of black with little holes through which the sun filtered.

Aziraphale frowned. “That sounds so vulgar.”

“Okay, then grace orgasm.”

“Now that’s just silly.” He chuckled. “There’s no name for it, my dear. It doesn’t need one as long as you and I know what it feels like.”

Crowley pulled back, his flat groin pressed against Aziraphale’s soft stomach.

“Can I?”

“Yes, my dear.”

Aziraphale undulated his upper body and flexed his shoulders until his wings pushed out from under him, making pillows fly off the bed. Crowley didn’t even wait to take them in, his hands already plunging deep into the softest feathers near his arms.

Aziraphale hummed in pleasure, closing his eyes, even as his hands were absently caressing Crowley’s thighs. “Yes, just like that.”

He stroked his palms down, then dragged his fingers up, bending the feathers the opposite way and Aziraphale gasped softly, his breath picking up. Crowley was drunk on the sight of his angel, how pleasure made his cheeks slowly flush, how his lips looked dry and he had to swallow more than once as if his mouth was dry, too.

He was on his fours above his angel and kept massaging the feathers up and down, then left and right and then pressing his palms into them. His angel shivered beneath him, back arching up as short nails scratched over his thighs. Crowley wings trembled, so attuned to his angel’s pleasure, that he cared not how his body responded to it.

“Yes, yes, my dear,” he breathed out, “faster please. Faster and harder. I’m close.”

A knot lodged itself into Crowley’s throat as he stared unblinkingly at his angel, hands moving whichever way into his wings, feeling as if his palms caught fire and at the same time were made of cotton. And then he dragged his fingers down, squeezing the feathers between them like the angel did to him and Aziraphale arched up, wings stretched taut, eyes shut tight, a silent cry caught on his lips, and Crowley’s palms tingled.

“My dear, that was—”

Crowley swallowed the rest of that sentence, the tip of his wings caressing Aziraphale’s, and he melted into his angel who embraced him like no one else had ever dared to. As if what lay tangled in that bed were not two physical bodies, but grace and stardust and charred pieces of a being long forgotten.

***

He sprayed more water with nutrients over his luscious plants, not paying much attention to them. It was harder and harder to go back to his angel’s bookshop even almost a week after the intimacy they shared. It wasn’t because he regretted what they did. More than that, he craved his angel the way he never had. The way only the most forbidden things were craved.

It must have been like this that Eve felt back then. And when he whispered those sweet, sweet words into her ear, the permission to go and touch and _take_ that were brimming deep within her, she must have felt elated. Elevated above the clouds (which hadn’t been made just yet).

Shadows coiled in the corner of his eye and he stilled, forbidding himself from turning around and chasing them like he did numerous times during the first few days.

It wasn’t shadows that he saw. It was a mix of dark and white, the tip of them coiled around each other, sometimes mixed into a faded grey. He knew what they were, he memorized the feeling, the temperature, the otherworldly vibrations.

Those not-shadows followed him into his dreams, painted them in bright colours he only barely remembered seeing. He hadn’t slept a wink since the third day it happened.

He left the green room at once, spray bottle placed on the nearest shelf, and went to sit on the foot of his bed, right in the middle of it. Without even thinking, his wings manifested high and molten black. They confounded themselves with the shadows that live in the corners of his bedroom. Slowly, they made a cocoon of Crowley and the clumps of light flickered to life. He touched some, the pads of his fingers numb to them. 

He was allowed to see them— but he’d never again be able to actually _feel_ them. Such was the punishment of a Fallen, even if technically he didn’t really, _really_ Fell. Still, he continued to touch them as if they had a texture and a temperature.

Aziraphale touched them. And, on a certain level, Crowley felt that touch through them. Or perhaps it had been Crowley’s most ardent wish in that moment as he drank his angel’s every micro expression in. He, out of every demon, would know what desire felt like.

It was a cunning feelings because it entwined with love and possession to the point where Crowley could not distinguish between them.

His wings shivered as he dragged his fingers between his secondaries and tertiaries, then parted a little as if he unknotted a clump that kept them tense in that position.

He didn’t gasp, but he did jolt back further onto his bed, wings winking out of existence, at the sight of his angel.

“Aziraphale,” his throat worked, “what— what are you doing here?”

Angel wrung his hands together the way he always did when there was something of a sensitive nature that he needed to tell Crowley.

“It’s been almost a week—”

“Five days and six hours,” Crowley said automatically. He’d been counting.

“You haven’t returned. I thought— well, I thought I— I went too fast for—”

The little hairs on his nape rose at the implication. “What? No! Not— not at all. Not fast. You went— you went just fine angel.”

“Then what happened?” 

He took a step forward and Crowley instinctively retreated even further on the bed, so now he had one knee bent and leaned to the other side of the bed. Aziraphale’s gaze fell on his legs before meeting Crowley’s again and taking a small step back.

A pang of guilt and sorrow lodged itself beneath Crowley’s ribs.

“Did I do something wrong?”

Crowley was shaking his head even before Aziraphale finished. “Nothing.”

Aziraphale glanced back at Crowley’s foot, the one that was extended, as if he was debating if he should grab it or not. 

“It’s just me, angel.” The ‘me’ tore away from his mouth raw and broken and like it cost him a limb to say it.

His angel’s eyes found his in an instant, a soft furrow between his eyebrows as he searched for the explanation to that on Crowley’s face.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, his face looking stoic, as if he made a decision, “it’s just you. I never asked or wanted more than that. Just you, my dear boy.”

A trembling exhale made Crowley’s body shudder softly. “Didn’t mean that,” he said because he needed to make at least something clear. And although he couldn’t deny that it did _things_ to him hearing his angel use such a possessive endearment, he needed to be as transparent as he could.

Which meant not that much because Crowley and honesty, even when it was about his angel, didn’t go as hand in hand as one might think. They usually scratched and tore at each other; Crowley at honesty, and honesty at Crowley. It was a mutual tearing.

“Then what did you mean?”

Crowley pressed his lips together, instinctively pulling his protective layers back together. They hadn’t unfolded completely, just a crack, but that crack made him feel like the Greek temples after an earthquake or the Colosseum when Rome fell or every Egyptian tomb ever trespassed.

“What is wrong, my dear? Please tell me. I want to help you, but I cannot if you do not tell me what troubles you.”

He was inching closer and closer to Crowley’s leg and he didn’t look as if he did it on purpose.

The thing was— Crowley’s foot was back on the brake pedal. And pushing down harder. It was instinct. Because even though he still loved his angel and would still give his life for him in an instant or do whatever his angel didn’t want to do for himself, he had no idea how to function in a relationship. Especially the kind that they were in— or rather, the one that the angel was pushing for.

“Why did you put up with me?” Crowley said.

“Did?”

“Do. You still do. You’re here. Why?”

“I worry about you, you know that, Crowley.”

Crowley shook his head. “No. I mean, yes, you do. Worry. But why don’t you tell me to piss off? I bring all my foul moods to you, yet you’ve to tell me to go to hell.”

“I would never!” The horrified expression that passed over his face made Crowley regret the choice of words.

“Yes. I know. Wrong choice of words.” He traced the bent of his right knee with his eyes.

“Crowley, my dear, I would never tell you to go away. Not when you hardly come by even now, years after the Apocalypse.”

That had Crowley look up at his angel as if he was stung. “I don’t?”

Aziraphale shook his head and then a hesitant and sad smile turned the corners of his lips up. “I thought it’d be different now that we don’t have to worry about our higher ups, but—”

“Nothing changed,” Crowley finished.

“No. Something did change.” His gaze was steady on Crowley. “You allowed us to become closer.”

“I didn’t— that wasn’t— you allowed that, too,” he said it like Aziraphale accused him and he was accusing Aziraphale back.

“Yes, I did. I’ve wanted you close and mine for a very long time, my dear. I was elated when you allowed us to be intimate, when you let me take care—”

“No. No! Stop!” Crowley felt every hair, existent and not, on his body rise as if the very atoms around him were made of electricity. “That’s— that’s beside the point!”

“Is it?” The angel had the _audacity_ to look surprised.

“Yes! Yes, it is. You didn’t answer my question. Why did— do you keep putting up with me? And don’t tell me that it’s because we’ve known each other for so long because it’s not that. We have no reason to be around each other now.”

Aziraphale fell silent after that, staring straight into Crowley’s _naked_ eyes, unmoving, unblinking— statuesque. Panic rose into Crowley’s throat. Angel needed to say something otherwise Crowley was going to jump out of his skin.

“We don’t?” There was an undercurrent warning in that tone of voice, as if Crowley’s foot was millimeters from stepping on a mine; the proximity led blinked awake.

His throat constricted, vowels and consonants crashing into each other to let out an incomprehensible sound. “Angel, please,” he managed to say without much of a plea in his voice. 

“I want you to ask.”

Crowley stared. “Ask?”

“Yes.”

“Ask what?”

“Ask— _things_ of me.” But he looked like that was not the choice of words he was looking for.

“Like you do?”

“No, no. Not like me. But it’s because of that that I want you to ask.”

His mind came back blank, like an error page. “You lost me, angel.”

Aziraphale sighed impatiently, but almost in the same breath he seemed to draw in every ounce of patience he didn’t have. “I always ask you for things, even before the Agreement, though I wasn’t aware of it at the time. Fact stands that you always, always gave me what I asked for. No questions, no reluctance. Now I want _you_ to ask _me—”_ here he paused, eyes shifting every which way as if he was reluctant to say the next words, “for love.”

“What?!” 

He almost recoiled all the way into the pillows (and would have recoiled beyond them into the wall) but Aziraphale caught his ankle and kept him there. Thankfully, he didn’t encroach into his personal space more than that, but even that was too much for Crowley’s frantic, panicking heart.

“Crowley, my dear, listen to me. You already have my love. You’ve had it for a very long time, but even now that we both know how we feel about each other, you hesitate and sometimes downright refuse to take what I’m offering.”

“I don’t—”

“You need it. You, more than anyone, need love, my dear.”

“I’m a demon!”

“And I’m an angel, yet I desire you.”

“You— do? Angelically?”

“I suppose it is very much humanly, if you wish for an accurate description. I feel possessive of you, no matter if you’re in my shop or out on the street. I want you to be mine.”

“But I’m—”

“Yes, you are. But I also want you to accept all my love.”

“I—” His eyes snagged back to the searing hot palm enclosed around his ankle. He never felt closer to spontaneously discorporate than in that very moment. “Angel, my ankle.”

“You know it’s there, but you never reached for it. You only feed yourself with the tiniest tidbits of that love.”

“My ankle, please. Your grace— think it’s coming out.”

“My grace is safely tucked away from hurting you.” And almost in the same breath he continued his previous idea, “Crowley, I want you to take more than that.”

“I’ll die, angel.”

The skin around Aziraphale’s eyes creased into little crow’s feet. “You won’t. I’ll make sure of that.”

“Angel, my ankle. Please let—”

“No. I’m not letting you go,” he said and it made Crowley meet his dark gaze. “You’re already running, Crowley. Away from me.”

“No, that’s not—”

“I’m here, my dear. And I want you to also want to be here, at my side.”

“But I’m— already— our side. We are.”

Aziraphale shook his head. “Not like that. You know what I mean.”

“Angel, please.” This time he really was pleading. Everything he couldn’t possibly let escape from deep within him was pleading with the angel.

They stared at each other for a long time before Aziraphale let ago and straightened. The smile that curled his lips made Crowley’s entire being spasm with a wound that felt fresh and bleeding, burrowed deep beneath denial and alcohol and purposeful ignorance.

“Well,” he said and pulled on his vest. “I apologise for coming on so strongly, my dear. I’ll leave you to it, then.”

“An—” But Aziraphale was gone already.

He fell back on the bed, a demon star-shaped form staring unseeing at the ceiling, his mind a-buzz.

***

It didn’t take him more than a handful of hours to work himself up so much that he drove his Bentley to the bookshop (and possibly scared the holidays out of a dozen pedestrians.)

“Angel!” 

He wasn’t at his desk.

“Angel, I’m—” 

He wasn’t in the back room.

“Angel?”

He wasn’t in the flat above.

Crowley turned around himself in the middle of the bookshop. The air itself was cold and felt as if Aziraphale hadn’t been inside for weeks, but it couldn’t have been that.

He gnawed at his lower lip, trying hard not to give in to the panic rising in his stomach, and then stilled. Taking a moment to center himself he imagined his wings melting, feather by feather, into little snakes which he dispersed on every street, alley, boulevard, nook and cranny in London in search for a very specific, impossible to overlook, feeling. His demonic powers warmed his skin in unpleasant ways.

It took him a bit to remember that feeling and train his metaphysical snakes to look for. He’d had milennia to train himself _out_ of being attuned to it.

It was a habit hard to get out of now because his mind kept sabotaging him and skirting away, his metaphysical snakes slithering every which way without a goal.

He clenched his fists and tried harder. This time he latched onto that faded memory of the first time he felt it, back on the wall, faint and barely there, and pushed his snakes to search for it.

They came back empty handed.

Aziraphale was not in London.

Even as the snakes melted back into his feathers, one by one, panic and old terror gnawed at his insides. What if Upstairs visited him? What if they took Aziraphale back? What if they found out about their little lie?

The last snake hissed and he turned around at once, unseeing eyes pointed straight at the back room. 

There, beyond walls and streets and people and trees, he felt it. In Tadfield, now unprotected by Adam’s bubble, a thick, pulsing wave of love suffused the town. The snake that felt it hissed again, slithering closer to that and pulling at something deep within Crowley. How far gone was he that he couldn’t even imagine the snake as completely black? Its head was white, bleeding into black with shades of red.

Through it he heard him. His angel.

“Oh, these look lovely, my dear. Do you think violets would go well amidst all the white and yellow?”

Even before the thought fully formed he became the white-headed snake, and the white-headed snake became him. As colours dissolved and melded together, the stretch he felt from willing his corporation kilometers away from the bookshop uncovered that maw deep within him, the kind that he kept under tight lid, buried into a corner of his being, safely away from overwhelming his angel.

But now, with the desperation licking at his feet and the implosive desire to be near Aziraphale he was unable to close that maw back. And it became bigger and bigger, swallowing every thought, every scrap of emotion as if it was hungry for _everything._

“Crowley?” 

He didn’t blink, but he did come back to himself to see Aziraphale with an armful of freshly cut flowers and the familiar worry burrowing deep into his face.

“What happened?” He took a couple of steps towards him, but he stopped. “Your face…”

He knew how his face looked like when he used his demonic powers that way, the snake scales peppered along his cheeks, neck and temples — the back of his hands and all over his back, the soles of his feet and all around his thighs. The maw inside him was reaching an alarming width. He ambled towards his angel and Aziraphale dropped the flowers to catch him because he was leaning forward precariously. 

The moment gravity took him down, he felt his grip on his corporation slip and his snake took over. This was easier. The feelings weren’t muddled, everything was stark and clear. He knew what he wanted in that moment.

And that was possessing his angel from head to toe.

So he did exactly that, enveloping his huge snake form around him, placing his head over Aziraphale’s cloudy-like hair.

“Crowley, dear, what is wrong?”

“Oh my!” Something fell behind them and Aziraphale turned them around to see— _intruder enemy stranger kill kill kill —_ Anathema. “Are you— are you all right, Aziraphale?”

“Yes, my dear, I am quite all right. It’s just Crowley.”

But Crowley didn’t want to understand anything beyond his instinct, and that was to open his huge mouth and hiss threateningly as he tightened around Aziraphale, prepared to snap.

“Crowley!” The admonishment in his angel’s tone and the malleable corporation inside his spiral becoming hard as stone and just as cold, cut Crowley off completely. “You won’t behave like un uncivilized snake with Anathema!”

“I’m a demon sssnake, angel,” he said, still staring at Anathema in that unnerving way that made anyone (but his angel) feel at least a bit intimidated. 

“You’re a rude snake right now. She was showing me how to tend to plants.”

That made Crowley pause and move his head around Aziraphale’s shoulder so he could look at him.

“What do you need that for?”

The rigidity of his angel faded away, and he became flesh and bone again. The muscles that were connected with different parts of Aziraphale’s body sighed in relief.

“Well.” Here Aziraphale floundered, looked at Anathema and then back at Crowley. “I thought that— it’s nothing dear. Why are you here?”

“You weren’t in your bookshop.”

“Oh. Yes. I wanted a bit of fresh air after— well. Felt like a stroll.”

“Lengthy stroll you had.”

“Yes.”

“He wants to know how to grow a hyacinth,” Anathema said, a biting tone to her voice, “because _someone_ made him feel as if he did something wrong. Wonder who that might be,” she continued, now the sarcasm skyrocketing and Aziraphale starting to fidget. “Because if I find out who that is, then that person will get an _earful_ from me. And possibly some curses thrown in, if the explanation is not plausible enough.”

“Anathema!” Aziraphale said, both indignation and plea in his voice. They turned and walked towards her, near the fence full of potted plants placed on three levels. “You’re not that kind of— occult.”

She threw him the kind of look that had a smile gathered around her eyes and gave her whole face a sharper, less amiable look. Crowle felt a smidgeon of respect bud within him for her.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Crowley told Aziraphale. He had left Aziraphale’s arms free, just so they would cup Crowley’s cold body and provide that little bit of warmth and comfort. “Why do you think that?”

Aziraphale’s eyes shifted, caught Crowley and then moved behind him, probably to catch Anathema’s. He floundered and then lowered his voice.

“I scared you. Back at your flat. I— I went too fast. You ran.”

“I didn’t!”

“Not physically.”

“Angel—”

“I’m sorry, my dear,” Aziraphale interrupted him, hands moving to wring themselves and Crowley didn’t like that. Because he was the cause of that. “I didn’t mean to cause you so much discomfort. I promise I won’t do that again.”

The pang that cut through Crowley’s entire being was full of dread. Instinctively, he uncoiled himself from the angel and melted into his human vessel. He was staring at something near Aziraphale’s shoe.

“Angel, I—”

“It’s okay, my dear,” Aziraphale interrupted him again, smiling as if Crowley was a client in his bookshop, and was moving towards Anathema already. “You don’t need to say anything.”

But he felt that now more than ever, Crowley _needed_ to say something, but nothing was working its way up his throat. Nothing. When he looked up at where his angel’s back was turned towards him, it was only Anathema’s dark, studying gaze that met his. There was a warning there. With a thought, he willed himself in his flat, not even bothering to take his Bentley from where it was parked in front of the angel’s bookshop.

***

It was the end of December and Crowley thought it to be a good day to visit the angel. He stopped coming by after the talk at Tadfield, and even though he came the next day to take his Bentley, he didn’t see the angel anywhere into the main room, so he didn’t stop by. 

Even to this day, he wasn’t sure he’d have gone inside if he saw Aziraphale.

But a potted hyacinth appeared in his green room, its soft purple petals contrasting with the overall deep green of the others. He could still smell the angel in there for hours afterwards. And for hours after the scent disappeared he stood still and stared at the plant as if it was the one responsible for the terrible situation Crowley was in.

The flower wilted within a few days no matter how much Crowley shouted at it. The one thing that the angel ever gave him and he couldn’t even make it last. It was as if the hyacinth was protected against Crowley’s usually effective persuasion and at the same time it mocked him for being such a coward, such a weak demon, afraid to hurt for the one being in all Creation that he had been ready to give up his life for.

Which was why, the day the plant died was the day Crowley could not stand the solitude of his flat anymore.

“Angel!” He burst into the shop, a sprint in his step that was anything but genuine. Even the smile felt a tad too rigid on his face. “Let’s grab a bite down at the Ritz.”

Aziraphale was writing something or other at his desk, but he turned in his seat and welcomed Crowley with a smile. He tried not to put too much weight on the fact that it didn’t bloom as much as it did the other times. That it didn’t make the shadows to bracket the corner of his mouth, that his eyes remained dull and sad.

“Of course, my dear. Let me grab my coat and we can go.”

They took Crowley’s Bentley as they wont to do and sat at the only table that was always reserved. Aziraphale ate a fillet of fallow deer with smoked beetroot, elderberry and chestnut, and for dessert he ordered a fig leaf mousse.

He talked and expressed his deepest appreciation for the food, and everything seemed to be as right as rain between them.

If Crowley hadn’t tried countless times during lunch to _casually_ touch his angel. Nothing worked. It was like Aziraphale created a protective barrier around himself that only allowed Crowley to skirt close, but never too close.

He splayed his limbs even further, took up more space than the seat allowed him, something that was not unusual with him. But even when he tried to knock his knee into Aziraphale’s he only found the foot of the table to knock against. 

Crowley was both seething and becoming all the more desperate. It was like chasing a specter that looked so tangible, yet kept eluding his grasp.

But when Aziraphale almost knocked his wine glass over with how unusually animated his hands were as he talked, something slotted home in Crowley’s mind, even though he stubbornly refused to believe it. Crowley instinctively shot his hand out to catch the wine glass (and it looked like his hand _would_ cover Aziraphale’s) only for Aziraphale’s hand to slide swiftly down to the stem so Crowley cupped the bowl. That was when he realised that Aziraphale was going out of his way to avoid any kind of physical contact with Crowley.

The ache that spread over his body made Crowley stop breathing.

It was so bad that his stomach closed completely, a knot of buzzing nerves.

He drove them back to the bookshop and because the memory of the day at the Tadfield Airbase sailed back into his mind along with Aziraphale’s threat, he killed the engine. He remembered thinking that not being able to talk to Aziraphale would’ve been the worst punishment ever concocted.

They were talking now. They were communicating. Aziraphale was responsive.

He was responsive— in everything but the way that Crowley now craved.

“Let’s drink,” he said, then looked at the angel. “Feel like drinking some of that Chateauneuf-du-pape you have.” He didn’t feel like doing that, but ending the day there felt like it’d drive an even bigger maw between them.

“I saw you didn’t touch the wine,” Aziraphale pointed out, some worry and suspicion making its way between his eyebrows and in his eyes.

“Wasn’t decanted right.”

“That is unusual. The staff always—”

Crowley waved a hand. “Must’ve been someone new.”

Aziraphale studied him and Crowley tried his best to keep his face stoic and still open enough to assuage any of the angel’s doubts.

“Very well, my dear.”

Crowley forced the wine down, past the knot in his stomach. It tasted like inked paper and despair, and just one mouthful felt like it filled his stomach to the brim. He forced more down as he watched his angel drink liberally.

He didn’t want to get plastered, but if that allowed him to stay in Aziraphale’s company a little bit more, then Crowley was determined to do whatever he could. Subjects began flying back and forth between them as usual, but this time Crowley’s point was different.

“I’m just _saying,”_ he fluttered his free hand, not buzzed enough to really slur the words, but buzzed enough to finally get rid of the nerves in his stomach, “geese have a special place in Hell.”

“They’re Her creations. Surely they won’t end up— Down There.”

“They will! They are!” He leaned forward from the sprawl on Aziraphale’s sofa and poured himself more wine, even if his stomach revolted at the thought of allowing anything else in. He didn’t drink, but he did lean back and watch Aziraphale with naked eyes. “They’re bastards all the way down to the marrow of their bones. Aggressive and dangerous. It’s not for nothing that many humans regard them as Hell’s spawns. Funny thing is that Hell’s as much afraid of them as the humans are.”

Aziraphale giggled. “Perhaps She wanted Hell to have a designated pet.”

Crowley shuddered. “If they’re not kept tightly contained within their level Down There, they’d surely end up contesting His Darkness’ rule over Hell.”

Aziraphale giggled harder and drank more, and Crowley couldn’t get enough of his flushed angel. But there was still too much space between them, and Crowley’s mind, being loose and relaxed, couldn’t go past the image of him occupying the free space on Aziraphale’s lap.

The distance between them was pushing against the pleasant buzz in his limbs, so he shifted his corporation towards the end of the sofa, closer to Aziraphale. He didn’t seem to notice because he was trying to explain to Crowley something about a new game that had a goose in it. Crowley, always on top of anything new that humans created, did know about the existence of the Untitled Goose Game.

He had it on his phone even if it hadn’t been created for smartphones.

“Was that yours?” Aziraphale asked out of the blue and Crowley had a moment of blankness.

“No. Not mine. Though I remember talking to an interested party about a similar idea about two or so years ago. Boisterous chap. Drank ale instead of wine. Only thing I remember from that conversation. And the back slap.” He winced.

Aziraphale fell silent and seemed to think hard about something, judging by the deep furrow of his eyebrows. Crowley glanced down at his full glass and then leaned forward to place it back on the low table.

“Well,” Aziraphale said, doing the same with half-full glass. “I think it’s time to sober up.”

Crowley nodded, but didn’t proceed to get rid of the alcohol in his bloodstream because he was finally warm and he liked the warmth that radiated from within himself. Especially now that there was no warmth to be had from outside his corporation. When the angel was done and the three bottles filled back up, he rearranged his bow tie, vest and coat and placed the bottles in the back room.

“Think I’ll crash on your sofa this evening,” Crowley said, fluffing the cushions that didn’t need to be fluffed. 

“Oh.” That simple exhale felt like a spike to his heart because the only thing that Crowley’s cotton mind could hear was disappointment. “Let me grab a blanket and pillow for you, then.”

Crowley’s mouth opened, ready to fire off _‘I’d much prefer if you joined me,’_ but Aziraphale was already gone and Crowley didn’t have the courage to demand that of Aziraphale. Not with the way things were between them in that moment.

He accepted the blanket and the angel went to sit at his desk. 

On the opposite side of the room.

Crowley wanted to scream, but instead he fluffed his pillow and made himself as comfortable under the blanket as he could.

He did try to sleep. It was something he was good at. But sleep eluded him. He tossed and turned and could not stop himself from being incredibly aware of where the angel was and the silence coming from that part of the room. Peering one eye semi-open, he spied Aziraphale’s rigid back. He wasn’t reading or writing or drinking his tea. He sat at his desk as still as a statue. 

Everything about him was like that. Had been since the conversation at Tadfield. Crowley couldn’t feel anything coming from his angel and the knot inside him was getting heavier the more time he spent around Aziraphale like that. That was what Crowley had feared back then; that once he stopped ignoring Aziraphale’s love for him, he would be unable to stop taking and demanding and possessing. 

It scared him so much that his only reaction was to backpedal. And backpedal hard.

But at the same time he saw what that did to their relationship and Aziraphale, and it was worse than the decades of silence after the holy water incident.

They stayed like that for long enough that Aziraphale’s desk lamp made efforts to light the room. Certainly Crowley’s corner was suffused with enough darkness that he could’ve slept easily until the next morning.

He didn’t.

He also gave up all pretenses and stood up. The blanket fell on the floor, but he ignored it as he took out his shades and unfolded them, pausing.

“I’m leaving, angel,” he said, no intonation, still studying his shades.

“So soon?”

“Yes. Got something to take care of.”

He made his way towards the door, resolving to let this happen, to close all doors, to return to their status quo and forget what happened between them. That was what Aziraphale seemed to want. Wasn’t that what he tried to do earlier today and before? All because Crowley was too afraid to take what Aziraphale was offering.

But why should he? His demonic nature would burn the angel to a crisp! Crowley was capable of hurting Aziraphale just like Aziraphale was capable of the same thing.

Yet, when he asked Aziraphale for holy water, the angel took it so badly that he didn’t speak to him for decades.

Yet, when later on Aziraphale threatened Crowley to never talk to him, Crowley went against the only two powers in the universe he was the most afraid of, only because he realised that dying there was better than repeating the silence from centuries ago.

And now he was leaving. Just like that. As if only Aziraphale was capable of changing their relationship or hitting the brakes or turning it upside down or take the step to bring it a level further. As if Crowley was fine with whatever the angel decided.

Well, he wasn’t fine with how things were in that moment. Or the angel’s decision. Or the angel’s attitude. It was actually getting on his nerves.

“Actually, I have nothing to take care of,” he said and turned on his heels, stocking that anger inside.

Aziraphale was standing by his desk, hand gripping the corner of it.

“You don’t?” He sounded like there were more important words he wanted to say, but kept a tight lid on them.

“I don’t.” 

“Would you care for some tea?”

“No. No, I want you to listen to me,” he said, confidence and urgency dripping from those words. “Angel.” But the courage was deserting him fast.

“Yes?” The desk creaked.

He took off his shades and willed a soft handkerchief into existence so he could clean them, something he never did because they knew better than to ever allow dust and dirt on them.

“I never apologised for earlier. I never apologise for anything because demons never do,” he muttered. “But I need to. I need you to know,” he looked up and he couldn’t read the angel’s face, “that I’m sorry for— for earlier. If I knew that it’d make us grow distant—”

“No!” Aziraphale said, steel in his voice. Crowley jolted. “You should never do anything that you don’t want to. It’s not right.”

“I’m a demon,” he said, for once wanting fire to be delivered with his words. “I never do the right thing.”

“But I do.”

Crowley stared at the angel, then, “you put distance between us!” he accused.

“Because you need time. I won’t—” 

“I don’t!” He threw his arms in the air, his shades almost flying away.

“You do!” Aziraphale’s voice was made of steel and came out a tad louder than usual. 

“I do not!”

“Then why did you run away?”

“I _didn’t!”_ Crowley’s anger was bubbling underneath his skin and to expel some of that he began pacing back and forth in a lot of directions. He almost walked all the way into the backroom.

“I misjudged,” Aziraphale said, tempering his tone. “I thought you were ready. But you weren’t.”

“Why did you even decide that? What if I was ready? What if you ‘misjudged’,” he mocked Aziraphale’s word, “yet again?”

“I didn’t!” Aziraphale didn’t like it when Crowley questioned and mocked his decisions in the same breath, especially if they concerned Crowley.

“Well, let me fill you in on something,” Crowley said, low and dangerous and stalked towards the angel with all the anger he had, getting in his face. He didn’t even care that his shades had been willed away somewhere and that his naked, unprotected eyes stared straight into the angel’s. “You were _wrong!_ You stopped when you should’ve pushed. Didn’t they teach you that Up There, angel? That with demons one needs a rough hand? Or is that only when you come down with all that Heavenly Wrath to obliterate us?”

Aziraphale was leaning back on the desk, eyes wide and worried, but the moment Crowley brought Heaven into discussion, his blues became cloudy and grey with anger, the kind Crowley was spouting about because he never had a survival instinct put in place.

Hands gripped the lapels of his black jacket and a mountain pushed him back until his back hit the nearest shelf hard enough that he gasped, hands flying to hang off Aziraphale’s iron grip. Even if he wanted, he couldn’t take them off. Aziraphale never showed his strength like this, and Crowley was hard pressed to ignore the way his body reacted to it.

“Let’s clear something up, _boy,”_ Aziraphale’s voice cracked like a mighty whip charged with a thousand thunders. 

Crowley was a wreck on the inside. Millennia upon millennia of walls and barbed wires and pools filled with venomous, vicious snakes, biting remarks, and alcohol-induced moments of denial, all crumbled into dust at the sound and sight of an angel exerting his strength and his righteous anger with his demon on _said_ demon. But he kept his face as still as possible by sheer will power. 

“I’ve been by your side for six thousand years. I know a thing or two about your moods and how to read them. I know when you need to be left alone and when you need someone to fuss over you. _I_ know. Not Heaven, not Hell. So don’t you ever dare bring them between us again, understood?”

Crowley exhaled and took notice of the shelves that dug into his nape, across his shoulder blades, and right above his arse, and realised that he had never been this turned on in his entire demonic life. Which was a bummer because that wasn’t the place, nor the time to have such a realisation.

But the angel always made things harder than they needed to be— in places Crowley sometimes wished he didn’t, while other times he wished Aziraphale would take notice and _do_ something about that. Not that he always made An Effort, but some denim looked better on him if he did. Like the ones trying to cut the blood flow below his waist for the past minute.

“You say you know a lot about me,” Crowley began, not knowing where the words were coming from, “yet you didn’t know that I needed you these past days.”

Aziraphale’s ire drained away so fast his face became as white as hospital walls. Crowley plowed on.

“You thought you were doing the right thing when, in fact, you were doing the wrong thing.”

Perhaps Crowley should have slapped him instead of saying that. Aziraphale mightn’t have looked so horrified. He took a step back, fists letting Crowley go. But Crowley was not in the mood to be let go, so he grabbed one wrist and kept it there, between them. 

“And.” His voice became soft. It was time to tear down the last walls that kept the warmth out. “I did the right thing to allow you in.” Aziraphale drew in a sharp breath. “You said that I needed love more than anyone and that I never took much from you. But the thing is, angel, that I would really die if I let all of that in.” 

Aziraphale opened his mouth to protest, but Crowley tightened his grip. He wouldn’t let the angel distract him or put a stop to this trainwreck of emotions that Crowley was pushing out.

“Trust me, I would. Just like the holy water you gave me, which I’m sure you blessed it yourself, your love is so pure that it would kill me, angel, from the inside. My wings are suffering already because of that. Becoming whiter at the tips. That’s why I take it in increments.”

The smile that bloomed on Aziraphale’s face made everything in the universe be right again. Everything in Crowley’s universe, that is.

“Oh, Crowley,” he said, free hand cupping Crowley’s cheek.

He shuddered and then locked his body. For the last time, he wasn’t going to run away.

“Perhaps I can increase the doses,” Crowley said, weak and surrendering all of himself to his angel.

He had time to catch the way Aziraphale’s smile charged ten thousand volts at once before he kissed Crowley hard enough that his head knocked back into the shelf.

He flailed his arms because the angel was literally lifting him off the ground. But that was the last of his worries because a freight wall of undiluted love hit him right in the face. On the other plane, his wings shook like trees during an earthquake, and he was worried he’d lose all his feathers if Aziraphale continued to maul him against his bookshelf.

“Angel,” he said between kisses, “too much!” The angel didn’t stop. “Kill— you’re— kill— ing— me!”

Aziraphale drew back. “Is it such a bad thing to die from?”

The way his spit-slicked, pink lips smiled, paired with the rosy cheeks and the half-lidded gaze, made the angel look positively sultry. If Crowley wasn’t half-drunk from the kisses, he was now closer to a coma.

“No,” he said, looking down at Aziraphale’s lips, so drunk on them he considered never touching wine again. “Not at all.”

“Good.” The beatific smile was never a good thing for Crowley. “Because I’m increasing the doses.”

_“NGK-mpfff!”_

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Bleached](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22445077) by [Uniasus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uniasus/pseuds/Uniasus)




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